Sunday, May 06, 2012

Can Taiwan's Soft Power Change China?

Sun Moon Lake.

A victory for Taiwanese-Americans as the state of California ended its crazy policy of forcing Taiwanese-Americans to list "Taiwan, province of China" instead of "Taiwan" as their birthplace. WTF does it matter? Not to mention that it is in complete conflict with US policy and international treaties...

In the context of another affirmation of Taiwan's undetermined international status it was interesting to be sent a piece from an academic in Hong Kong arguing that Taiwan can change China....

Taiwan should follow Hong Kong in becoming more open to mainland tourists and students. Rather than viewing the bilateral relationship in “hard power” terms including the military balance between the two sides, Taiwan can wield the “soft power” of liberal values. These values will eventually subvert the PRC’s authoritarian system, making it converge socially, economically, and politically with Taiwan and Hong Kong.

It is hard to imagine why any rational person would want to "converge socially, economically, and politically" with an authoritarian state like China, which is what the author is actually advocating.

Like most such pieces, it consists entirely of commonplaces and unexamined assumptions. A widespread one:

In order to achieve this, Taiwan should accelerate interactions with mainland China. For example, Taiwan can allow more mainland Chinese students to study in its universities. Students will return to the mainland with a better understanding of democratic institutions and practices.

Few Chinese students who come to Taiwan are in positions to effect change. By contrast, there are thousands of Chinese students in the western democracies. Can anyone point to concrete changes in China as a result of this enormous presence? Let me also remind the reader that many of the anti-democracy elites at the top of the KMT have degrees from US universities...

The author goes on:

Second, Taiwan should build deeper economic interactions with the PRC, including an economic union. This will bind the economies of mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao together. It will also encourage accelerated political transformations in the PRC.

This is rather a strange claim. First, creating an economic union with the PRC would indeed bind the economies of China and Taiwan, so the second sentence merely restates the first. And so what? The PRC's politics are not freer than they were when Taiwan businessmen started going over to China twenty years ago; the security state is larger and more pervasive. The CCP shows no sign of reform or change. Taiwan businessmen in China are careful to toe the Party line and usually do not engage in local politics. In any case the major driver of change in China is/will be the Chinese themselves and economic union will have little effect on that. This is a mere ideological faith statement...

Moreover, economic union would reward China's current strategy of pressuring Taiwan to annex itself to China and to entangle the two economies so deeply as to impair Taiwan's freedom of action. It is hard to see how rewarding expansionist, authoritarian behavior can change that behavior. Economic union will of course be followed by increased pressure for outright annexation....

There's actually the germ of a good idea here....

Third, Taiwan could adopt a much bolder attitude in political negotiations with the PRC. In the past, Taiwan’s elites have adopted a conservative approach, arguing that the PRC must first change politically to allow negotiations to take place. But the time is ripe to push mainland Chinese elites to adopt more political tolerance of political dissent and freedom of speech and assembly.

It might be good for the KMT if the Ma Administration was more critical of China's restrictions on speech and dissent as well as on the property and economic rights of its people. But such a discourse would not be aimed at Beijing but rather at the KMT's domestic audiences... and the lack of such a discourse at present in Taiwan should have signaled the author that a KMT-led government can never change China through increased interaction because at heart the KMT and the CCP share too many political and social values.

As for the "time being ripe", it is always the time to talk about how we can make our world more democratic....

Moreover, Taiwan's democracy is not the result of KMT party efforts, but of the sacrifices of thousands of activists who struggled to build a democracy here, most of whom were pro-independence as well. Because independence and democracy are intertwined values in Taiwan, one cannot be asserted without simultaneously asserting the other. This handicaps the pro-China parties in their expressions of support for democracy and in their use of democratic discourses as tool to change the CCP, since they are anti-independence.

Taiwan changes China not by direct interactions with the leadership in Beijing, but by constantly being an example of an alternative Chinese polity that locals in China can use for everything from a stick to beat the authorities with to an example to be emulated. Taiwan changes China simply by existing. Every day Taiwan remains free is another day that there is a society that daily refutes the idea that China and its daughter cultures cannot handle democracy. A consequence of the PRC's insistence that Taiwan is "Chinese" is the undermining of its own claims that western-style democracy is inappropriate or unacceptable for Chinese.

Finally, another aspect of the "soft power" issue is that the author of this piece does not appear to consider the possibility that China with its vastly greater material resources and power might more greatly change Taiwan in negative directions (note how vague he is on what "converge" means). Already there is a large segment of local businessmen who serve China's interests in Taiwan, as the developing boycott of the China Times is highlighting, and the influence of China in the media is profound. The reader will no doubt be able to think of others...
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Apple Daily has a report today on calls for increases in the proportion of hours devoted to studying the Chinese classics in Chinese education to 65% and similar moves.

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13 comments:

Allow me to paraphrase:Second, Taiwan should build deeper economic interactions with the PRC, including an economic union. This will bind the economies of mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao together. It will also encourage accelerated political transformations in the PRC.

The idea that Taiwan serves as an example of a democratic Chinese society may have some value, but only to the extent that the Chinese people remain ignorant of Taiwan. This is because it is precisely the Chinese part of Taiwan's society that seems to have the most trouble embracing democracy. When reflecting soberly on Taiwan, it seems to be an example of how Chinese society cannot accept democracy, and that Chinese power within a society works against democracy. Taiwan's example makes me very pessimistic that China might ever become democratic.

The idea of Chinese students coming to Taiwan to learn about democracy might be a good one if Taiwan's democracy were more deeply embedded. However the fragility of the democracy argues against bringing too many Chinese to Taiwan.

Yes, I thought that was Sonny Lo's piece. Was not sure. His book "The Dynamics of Beijing-Hong Kong Relations" even claims that HK "reunification" might serve as the "model" for Taiwan. Of course, he has not taught in HK for many years, now working at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

Michael, thank you for your thoughtful piece. I have been telling Taiwan's government for years that its soft power lies in its democratic credentials ('an example of an alternative Chinese polity'). I am a big critic of the Asian values thesis which is just a weak justification for authoritarian government. Against all my advice, Taiwan's government insists on 'culture' as the bedrock of its soft power. I do not agree with the comments by Readin that Taiwan is a fragile democracy. My observations of the political system there, and especially the legitimacy of the electoral system, suggests that Taiwan is a consolidating democracy. Michael, you do question the value of student exchange. This is part of a long-term strategy, and while the effects are not immediate, interacting with locals and living in another country - whether in the UK, the US or Taiwan - is a real eye-opener. Just think about how the Chinese tourists visiting Taiwan prefer to stay in their hotels at night to watch local talk shows.

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